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Minister Ferguson's address to ministerial counterparts at the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum in London on knowledge-sharing in carbon capture and storage development
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.
I'm pleased to open the discussion on the value of knowledge-sharing in carbon capture and storage.
As we heard from Ed Miliband, knowledge-sharing is one of the major challenges in making CCS a commercial reality.
Protecting intellectual property is perhaps the most contentious barrier, a fear that sharing knowledge will compromise returns on innovation.
At the same time, there are national, cultural, institutional, commercial and personal issues that often get in the way.
These barriers can be - and must be - overcome.
I don't have all the answers on how we do this, but some of the innovative joint ventures we are seeing will help to break down some of these barriers.
As with any joint venture, we need to have trust in each other for knowledge to be transferred successfully.
That's why Australia launched the Global CCS Institute - a truly independent, well-funded agency to be a global broker of expertise.
By sharing knowledge, the Institute can help to spread the technology across the world, drive down costs, accelerate innovation and improve public awareness.
That's especially important when the technology is new, the capital costs are high and the potential returns will not be significant in the early stages.
The Institute will offer the international community a comprehensive reference point for CCS, a clear definition of what it means to be 'CCS-ready', a portfolio of project types and a model for overcoming deployment gaps to accelerate investment.
At every stage, knowledge-sharing is at the core of the Institute's approach.
The Institute will take the lessons from each country's experiences and be a global hub for non-proprietary information.
Stakeholders can then identify the knowledge specific to their needs.
Given the strength of membership in the Institute, I am confident that it will provide this global brokerage role but we all need to think about how to contribute to this.
In Australia for example we have a selection process underway to provide $2 billion for commercial scale projects.
We've also invited the Global Institute to sit on our assessment panel.
The Institute will also be involved in negotiating the information-sharing obligations we will include in contracts with funding recipients.
In this way we hope to maximise the value of our investment in the Institute and therefore to the global CCS goals.
Investment hinges on the confidence of investors, so the Institute can be pivotal in fostering a spirit of global co-operation and inspiring confidence.
By doing so, we make the end result greater than just the sum of the parts.
Of course, the Global CCS Institute is not the only vehicle for knowledge-sharing.
This Leadership Forum, the International Energy Agency and the Major Economies Forum are the groups that should drive government commitments on knowledge-sharing.
Today, I'm pleased to present an outline paper that emerged from the meeting in L'Aquila.
Working with our British colleagues, we hope this paper on carbon capture, use and storage technology will be ready for the Major Economies Forum Leaders next month.
Ladies and gentlemen, we need a global community for carbon capture and storage.
Knowledge-sharing will foster the innovation, investment and integration necessary if we are to make this technology a commercial reality by 2020.
Thank you